Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Finishing up Project Joy 2011

Well, my great laid plans didn't go exactly as expected for 'Project Joy' this past year, but I am still extremely happy with the end result and very glad I did it.

My motivation and passions were not in the area of scrapbooking for most of the second half of the year. However, December and the approaching New Year gave me the desire to finish what I had started. Here are my layouts for the second half of 2011.

1 - Sage learns to ride her bike while camping in Battle Creek. 2 - Regan holds a huge bullfrog the girls caught at camp. 3 - Sage does pushups to win a water bottle at the air show. 4 - Regan gives Sage a ‘banana’ mask. 5 - Stunt plain from the air show. 6 - Girls make veggie animals for the library flower show - which they both won. 7 - Daddy catches a big one in the pond. 8 - Fantastic fireworks at the Battle Creek Air show. 9 - Hot Air balloons light the sky before the fireworks. 10 - The girls create their own version of the flower show.

1 - Sage loses her first tooth. 2 - The girls play video games on the old Nintendo system before selling it at a garage sale. 3 - Last photo of my original wedding ring before trading it in for a new one. 4 - Girls have fun turning scraps of Grandma’s yarn into God’s eyes. 5 - Mommy gets a banana facial from the girls 6 - Regan enjoys feeding the giraffes at Binder Park Zoo. 7 - Sage and Regan enjoy playing aggravation with Mommy and Daddy. 8 - Regan smiling over her ice cream sundae at her ‘friend’ party. 9 - The girls take a sunset dip at Ludington State Park.

1 - Fresh batch of one of the families favorites - breakfast cookies. 2 - Tent set up on the deck for the girls to sleep in. Regan chickened out and Sage slept out there alone. 3 - Sage helps Regan rollerblade down the driveway 4 - Regan has fun making ‘thumbprint’ animals using a book from the library (skipping the thumbprint and drawing the body instead). 5 - Sage mans the buckets for the girl’s ‘fish farm’. 6 - Today’s harvest - eggs, two types of tomatoes and green and purple beans. 7 - The girls find a stash of costume jewelry at Grandma VanderWall’s. 8 - Some good clean fun with water balloons.

1 - Sage works on a picture of herself at her first day of school. 2 - The girls stuff their jammies with animals and play ‘belly bonk! 3 - Sage’s rides a pony at Tuesinks on her first field trip. 4 - Peaches are in season and we ate and froze two bushels!. 5 - The girls use their garage sale proceeds to buy their much desired fish tank. 6 - The freezer is full of goodness - tortellini soup, venison and various other things. 7 - Regan starting third grade. 8 - Sage starting kindergarten.

1 - Dressed and ready to go trick or treating with Theune’s. 2 - Sitting in the ‘big chair’ at art prize. 3 - Somewhere on this tree is a wooden disc that Regan painted at Girl Scouts for an exhibit at Art Prize. 4 - Apple and pumpkin pies ready to go to the school for a bake off at Harvest Festival. Sage won for her apple pie in the Y5’s/Kindergarten category. 5 - Flowers from Caroline were a pleasant surprise on my 40th birthday. 6 - Pumpkins carved (mostly) by the girls this year!

1 - Marley shivers with anticipation, hoping to get a chance to chase the squirrel that is eating from the bird feeder. 2 - Mommy and the girls at Greenfield Village. 3 - Kodak moment for the girls at Henry Ford Museum. 4 - The elves up to more mischief,, making snow angels with flour. 5 - Sage uses an antique view master at Greenfield Village. 6 - The girls redecorate the house with balloons and streamers the elves used to decorate their bedroom. 7 - First official snow fall always gets the girls excited and outside to play.

1 - Regan paints some sugar cookies with strawberry flavored icing. 2 - Sage loves being my kitchen helper, peeling carrots on this day. 3 - The girls added pictures and stickers and notes to the 25 wrapped Christmas books the elves left. 4 - Marley takes a little ‘cat nap’ on daddy. 5 - Sage hangs out with her buddy Gabi while we wait for Regan’s Christmas concert. 6 - The girls did a great job decorating our feeble tree, 7 - Regan wanted to keep the gingerbread house and men that she made indefinitely.

I am so happy to have these 'year in review' pages done for 2011. I had never done these types of pages in the past and love how easy it is to include 'everyday life' in this format. I loved having a simple, repeated page style to use and the fonts predetermined, as this made it very easy to put pages together. By the time I got to the last layouts, I did find I was a bit 'bored' with the layout style and will try to come up with something a wee bit different for this coming year. Lots of fresh ideas rattling around in my head!

What about you? Did you do a 365/52 project last year? Are you doing one this year? I would love to see it or hear about it!!

6 comments:

It was so nice to see your blog entry appear on my reader list! I think of you often as I use your scripts daily - thank you so much for them. It was nice to "catch up" with your goings on. I hope you have a blessed year filled with joy.

I took a stab at the project last year but never committed. This year I have taken a picture everyday and completed layouts for each week. I used an album template I already had, primed them with papers - one for each season, and a few other bits to ease the process. There are 20 LO to choose from. I've found myself journaling more than in the past as well.

Thanks for sharing your process and pictures. Mine are posted here (http://p365fractled.blogspot.com/). My goal is to forge on. So far I am proud of myself for being on track.

I'm on my 3rd year of a Project 365. I did a Project Life album (paper album) in 2010. Last year my photo printer broke, so while I have the album, I never printed my photos and now I'm putting together a digital version. It's my first foray into digital scrapping and I love it so that's what I'll do this year as well.

I LOVE how your project looks in the layouts above. I am wondering if you are planning to sell templates that are like the ones you show above? They seem different from the ones that come in your Project Joy quickstarts - these layouts have fewer than 7 pictures on each page and generally have the photos taking up more of the page than the white space. They are exactly the kind of thing I am looking for! I will experiment with making my own, but I am very new to this. I did experimentally try to just lay out a page with photos, not using a template, just trying to get things to line up, and it was much harder than it looked!